Local Color Seeing Place Through Watercolor

Description

The world is made up of colour, yet how often do we truly observe and interpret our surroundings? This book will introduce readers to a colour palette technique used by Mimi Robinson, where, through close observation, one can if even for a moment, capture the essence and beauty of place, by documenting your experiences through colour. It's about a way of seeing and sharpening your powers of observation through color and individual sense of place. Colours are specific to bio-regions, watersheds, environments, and dots on a map. Taking the time to look a little closer at what you see every day will connect you to your surroundings, creating personal memories of time and travel. This book and self-guided exercises alongside illustrated examples guides the reader, ranging from experienced artist or novice, to travel enthusiast or journal writers to create their own individual and time-based colour palettes. In this age of fast culture, instant gratification, and 24-hour news media, this process of colour observation allows you to slow down, and become fully absorbed in the present moment. Each palette can become an essay, a meditation, to capture your surroundings. To that end the book is meant to unfold as you go along, rather than giving the technique and technical information up front, the book engages the reader's self discovery. Each step is a smaller view, which expands into larger view to observing the colour around us. This direct hands-on practice encourages you to open your eyes to things you may not have seen before, and further develops your colour senses. Mimi Robinson invites you to take back your colors?rename them for yourself. Get to know them. This journal/workbook includes everything you need to get started."

Author description

Artist, designer, and educator Mimi Robinson has been creating colour palettes inspired by place for over fifteen years, at first for her own painting, and then as a way to get a strong sense of landscape on her travels and heighten her sense of colour. "Colour is a thread that runs through everything," she says. In her design studio in San Francisco, Robinson creates designs that reflect her perspective of traditional materials and techniques. She partners with artisan communities to create products that utilize traditional skills and local materials, building small businesses for artisans, that incorporate their unique artistic legacies. Robinson has worked extensively in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caribbean. She is the founder of Bridging Cultures Through Design, an initiative that promote and engages creative exchanges between students and artisan communities around the world. She is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and is currently an adjunct professor at California College of the Arts, leads workshops and does extensive lecturing.